Bismillah
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**This poem was written for "Front Lines," a documentary poetry project pairing poets with physicians on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic. A website where readers can learn more about the project and read other "Front Lines" poems is forthcoming.
Bright light, persimmons wrapped in paper, vent-
ilator, scrubs: To say the time of death,
to say this person’s name out loud, to toss
a shaky knife at the moon. It became
a very silent practice, spinning out the spark
of smile in someone else’s eyes…
Abbas,
I’d like to write full sentences for you,
to place the taste of water—common, strange,
unburnt, unmasked (the after-mask)—but bright
the history of medicine, and bright
your children’s names, and bright the crayfish you
caught as a kid. I heard you say fever
cough, short of breath; fever, cough, short of breath
and thought of persimmons that ripen, coaxed:
little orbs, little flames: and names,
(I will not let you go) and names.
ilator, scrubs: To say the time of death,
to say this person’s name out loud, to toss
a shaky knife at the moon. It became
a very silent practice, spinning out the spark
of smile in someone else’s eyes…
Abbas,
I’d like to write full sentences for you,
to place the taste of water—common, strange,
unburnt, unmasked (the after-mask)—but bright
the history of medicine, and bright
your children’s names, and bright the crayfish you
caught as a kid. I heard you say fever
cough, short of breath; fever, cough, short of breath
and thought of persimmons that ripen, coaxed:
little orbs, little flames: and names,
(I will not let you go) and names.
Abby Minor lives in the ridges and valleys of central Pennsylvania, where she works on poems, essays, gardens, quilts, and projects for reproductive justice.